2022 Virtual Issue: “Walking Through the Fire”
By Dom Amoroso with Janneken Smucker
Humans have learned to evolve to persevere in the face of adversity, even in the most challenging of times. Over the last 100 years alone, society has experienced two global wars, two global pandemics, and a host of other crises in human rights, the environment, and the economies that keep the world moving along. What can we learn from trying times? What good comes out of them? The theme for this year’s OHA annual meeting, “Walking Through the Fire: Human Perseverance in Times of Turmoil,” calls on its members to reflect on how people “walk through the fire” during tumultuous circumstances and emerge on the other side. Oral history as a method and medium allows us to examine perseverance, by listening to and analyzing the accounts of those who have walked through the fire, in order to understand why and how individuals have made it to the other side.
Since the nation’s founding, as well as predating it, individuals in the United States have experienced discrimination and systemic persecution at the hands of various factions of the government, hate groups, and the nation’s legal system. The notion that the battle for equality ended with the passing of the Civil Rights Act, is a complete fallacy, and within the last ten years, movements such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter have instilled renewed recognition among Americans—as well as citizens worldwide—that the fight for change must continue and is never complete.
While people of various ethnicities, genders, and sexual orientations have been the victims of oppression, African Americans have faced distinct challenges as they have walked through the various forms of fire as they persistently pursue equality. African Americans, time and time again, have experienced a vast array of systematic discriminatory policies, actions, and violence directed against them by both individuals and systems, with efforts at achieving equality never proceeding in a consistent and progressive direction; it’s often been one step forward, two steps back. It behooves us to listen carefully, and consider why and how successes have been achieved. What has caused perseverance? In our current period of trying times in which there are new efforts to “turn back the clocks” on justice and equity, it is imperative to pay attention to the lessons from the past and draw inspiration from the fighting spirit of those that have persevered in the face of adversity. Through oral history, we can tie together generations past and present to educate society in hopes of forming a more equitable one.
The articles below that we have selected from the Oral History Review archive not only interpret the struggles that have led to perseverance but detail the ways that oral history provides a platform for sharing these accounts, while also detailing the methodological challenges that oral historians may face through the interview, interpretation, and preservation processes. How can practitioners preserve and translate these stories for future generations? How can these accounts of walking through the fire shape the way we understand injustice and activism today? How do we consider whose stories of adversity are worth listening to and preserving?
This virtual issue examines how oral history methods have helped preserve and interpret the ways that African Americans have walked through the fire. The first piece, adapted from a talk by the renowned author Alex Haley in 1973 (prior to his bestselling 1976 novel Roots), provides a primer for understanding the role of multigenerational storytelling in sharing and interpreting Black history. Although this article was written nearly fifty years ago, Haley’s approach resonates today, with echoes in The 1619 Project and other analyses that dislodge traditional narratives of the past. Following Haley’s introduction, the articles that follow examine how oral history has helped reconstruct interpretations of the past in communal and educational settings.
The terrain of cities has often been “the fire” African Americans have walked through, as they have navigated segregation in various forms, which have limited the use of physical spaces and restricted economic and educational opportunities. Oral historians have used their craft to record these experiences at the micro-level. As urban neighborhoods transformed with demographic shifts precipitated by both migration and immigration, residents faced cultural clashes and found ways to forge new alliances. In “Oral Recollection and the Historical Reconstruction of Black San Francisco, 1915-1940,” (1984) Albert Broussard tracks the nonviolent efforts of a community that refused second-class status. Abigail Perkiss’s “Reclaiming the Past: Oral History and the Legacy of Integration in West Mount Airy, Philadelphia,” takes a conscientious approach to capture the integration history of one of Philadelphia’s most diverse communities. Roger Davis Gatchet’s article, “‘I’ve Got Some Antique in Me’: The Discourse of Authenticity and Identity in the African American Blues Community in Austin, Texas,” uses oral history methods to detail the ways a historically-marginalized community of musicians employed the concept of authenticity in conceiving their own identity in this place-based project. In each of these articles, narrators express distinct ways through which they navigated their cities, a reminder that for many African Americans the mere practice of living and working in an urban environment can be a frequent struggle over space, identity, and culture.
The next group of articles examines the experiences of Black Americans within the education system. When inequalities in education create obstructions for those trying to obtain it, the promise of educational opportunities can feel like battling fire with only a watering can. Although the Brown v. Board decision eliminated de facto segregation in schools, it took decades to apply this ruling, and even in the present day systematic racism pervades the nation’s educational system. Oral history enables us to hear firsthand accounts from historical actors including students, educators, and parents whose lived experiences reveal more about the struggle for equity in education than mere laws can convey.
Barbara Shircliffe’s, “‘We Got the Best of that World’: A Case for Study of Nostalgia in the Oral History of School Segregation,” examines the nature of memory when looking back on times of struggle; rather than recalling segregated education solely as a form of oppression, some former students and educators have fondly recalled their school experiences prior to desegregation. Memory is a frequent subject of analysis for oral historians, and in Shircliffe’s study, is colored by nostalgia. Perhaps this is the nature of perseverance; when looking back from the other side of the fire, we can see the joy in the struggle. Tracy E. K’Meyer picks up on the story of desegregating schools in “Remembering the Past and Contesting the Future of School Desegregation in Louisville, Kentucky, 1975–2012,” also delving into issues of memory, while analyzing how oral history can be a tool for influencing policy debates.
The oral history method itself can cause challenges to the research process, with the core analysis occurring as an intersubjective dialog between interviewer and interviewee. Francena Turner’s & ArCasia James-Gallaway’s recent piece, “Black Baby Boomers, Gender, and Southern Education: Navigating Tensions in Oral History Methodology,” (2022) considers the specific tensions that rose through oral history projects centered on the educational experiences of African Americans in the American South during the 1960s and 1970s.
The final two articles examine the role that oral history has in preserving stories of struggle and resilience and will force historians to reflect on the effectiveness of their own processes and presentations. While it is imperative to absorb the experiences of those who persevered through these times, it is also important as oral historians to reflexively examine our role in stories’ construction. The penultimate piece by Ricia Anne Chansky, Katrina M.Powell, & Dao X. Tan, “A Necessary Tension: Editors, Editing, and Oral History for Social Justice,” encourages readers to reflect on their own processes as historians and documentarians, while being cognizant of operating in a context promoting social justice.
The concluding piece to this virtual issue analyzes some of the risks inherent in telling someone else’s story, made even more complicated by racial divisions. Mary Rizzo’s article “Who Speaks for Baltimore: The Invisibility of Whiteness and the Ethics of Oral History Theater,” (2021) analyzes how a theatrical production used oral history to (mis)interpret the history of Baltimore’s neighborhoods. When first published, Rizzo’s article created a stir as she challenged oral historians to reconsider the tenant of “shared authority” when it comes to examining who has the power to interpret another’s past. Rizzo’s piece, and this virtual issue as a whole, remind us that sometimes the struggle is in having the hard conversations, in being uncomfortable while listening, in forcing oneself to be heard rather than silenced. The struggle is real, as they say, and it’s our job to listen in.
Alex Haley (1973) “Black History, Oral History, and Genealogy,” The Oral History Review ,1:1, 1-25.
